GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) — Egypt is training hundreds of Palestinian police officers with an eye towards integrating them into a post-war security force in Gaza, a Palestinian official told Agence France-Presse.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced the plan to train 5,000 officers for Gaza during talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in August.

A first group of more than 500 officers were trained in Cairo in March and since September the two-month courses have resumed to welcome hundreds more people, the Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He said all members of the force will be from the Gaza Strip and paid by the Palestinian Authority, which is based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

“I’m very happy with the training. We want a permanent end to war and aggression, and we’re eager to serve our country and fellow citizens,” said a 26-year-old Palestinian police officer.

He told AFP he hoped the security force would be “independent, loyal only to Palestine and not subject to external alliances or objectives.”

“We received outstanding operational training, with modern equipment for border surveillance,” said a Palestinian lieutenant who also requested anonymity for security reasons, as did everyone interviewed by AFP.

The lieutenant, who left Gaza with his family last year, said the training focused on the fallout of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war and the damage done to the Palestinian cause.

Hamas’s attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,100 people, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.